2013 Custom Shootout spotlights Whiticar Boat Works and the family ...

At 102, Capt. Curt Whiticar
ranks as the dean of custom boat
building. With a boat building
and fishing heritage that predates
even Rybovich, Merritt and Tillet,
the octogenarian maintains a full
schedule between the original
paintings he creates and public appearances to promote his 2007 first
person memoir Whiticar Waterway Tales, which he wrote and illustrated
in longhand between golf dates. Amazing does not come close
to describing the man, that with the exception of the crutches he gets
around on, could easily could pass for 78.
The Whiticar story begins in Stuart, Fla. in 1921 when the future boat
builder and designer pooled his profits from delivering newspapers and
painting names on boat hulls to build a 14-foot skiff of his own design.
Two years later he traded up to 16-foot Vee-bottom smooth planked
skiff he built from plans purchased from Motor Boating Magazine.
Powered by a 12-HP Johnson outboard, the boat was self supporting,
said Whiticar, who used it to catch snook, trout and for net fishing in
Florida. He also used it at the family’s summer residence in Fortescue,
N.J. where his father was a respected charterboatman for ferrying parties
to the charter boats moored off the beach. “I got 50 a head plus
tips,” he said.
Recalling adventures that taught him about seamanship, sportsmanship
and human nature, the skiffs were the start of it all, said Whiticar.
For many years, the Whiticars,
like the Merritts, transitioned
between winters in Florida and
summers in New Jersey, following
fish and the charter clientele
north. The St. Lucie River in
those days was loaded with fish,
he said. “We would tie one end
of the net near the shore and
row back out perpendicular to
the bank with the net feeding
1 | The Custom Shootout
Stuart Boat
Builders:
At 102 Capt. Curt Whiticar’s
Creations are a Thing of Beauty
by Jan Fogt
out across the stern. When we came to the end, we anchored the net to
the bottom and put a lantern out on a float tied to the end to mark it,
so other fishermen would not run over our cork line.” Many a weekend
night, the youngster and his friends would land a hundred or more
pounds of fish, he adds. This was in addition to the money he made
painting names on charter and private boats in Forestcue and Stuart
and his ferry business. With a steady bankroll and growing curiousity,
Curt continued to build boats and test ideas about hull forms. By
1931, he’d designed and built six boats, all small with the exception
of the 33-foot charter boat he designed and built for himself. By this
time, his father Addison had built a successful charter fleet catering to
winter visitors at the Sunrise Inn and Pelican Hotels in Stuart, a fleet that
over the next decade grew to seven boats. One of the largest charter fish
ing operations north of the Palm Beaches, the Whiticar Fleet operated
out of the family’s winter compound on Willoughby Creek, a short walk
from the Sunrise Inn and Club, where the patrons helped grow not only
the charter fleet but Whiticar Boat Works as well, said Curt.
The success of many custom boat builders can be traced to such
patrons who not only bought boats from builders but influenced
their friends to buy them. At Rybovich and Sons that patron was
Charles Johnson. For Merritt Boat Works, it was Bill Carpenter. For
the Whiticars, it was New York stock broker and financial investor
Irving Bonbright. A founding member of the Sunrise Inn and Club,
Bonbright fell in love with Stuart and with the iconic patriarch Capt.
Add Whiticar. In 1923 Capt. Add agreed to allow Bonbright to fish
one rod and reel from his commercial handline boat. By the end of the

season Whiticar was on board with Bonbright bankrolling a 26-footer
that could be fished offshore. That was the beginning of a lifelong
partnership between the two and more or less the beginning of the end
of my father’s commercial fishing career, adds Curt. Eventually Curt
and his two younger brothers Johnson and Jack followed their father
into the charter fishing business, running their own boats, Gulfstream,
Skipper and Hobo.
With Bonbright’s help, Whiticar bought two acres of waterfront property
near the Sunrise Inn and Club on Willoughby Creek, building a
three stall boathouse and two cottages for his family to live in and for
Irving Bonbright’s guests use. Soon after, work began on a 26-foot skiff
that Capt. Add and Bonbright had commissioned from Backus Boat
Works in Fort Pierce. Called the Betsy-B, although Curt had nothing to
do with its construction, he frequently accompanied his father to visit
boat building projects in Florida and out New York and New Jersey.
For a while it looked like
Curt would not follow his
father into the business.
Following high school he
enrolled at Bliss Electrical
School in Washington,
D.C. to learn to be an electrical
engineer and by 1931
was employed by Western
Electric in New Jersey. It
didn’t take long for Curt
to miss the fishing and the
boats that were so much
a part of his life. In 1934
his father offered him a job
managing and running his
two charter boats that summer
so he could take a job
running Irving Bonbright’s
42-foot sportfishing yacht at Fisher’s Island, N.Y. “The charter business
at Fortescue had been declining and dad felt the opportunity with Mr.
Bonbright was too good to pass up. Even though business was tough,
I was glad to leave Western Electric and take the business over for him
that summer.”
That summer Curt also began a correspondence course from the Westlawn
School of Yacht Design. By this time he had built a half dozen or
so boats on his own and working with other builders. The course was so
rudimentary, he said, he gave it up and turned to something more inspirational
to further his education about boat design. Namely a book
about design and theory by a renowned naval architect named Skeene.
Skeene’s work was cutting edge, said Whiticar, full of ideas that challenged
and inspired him to begin work on a 33-foot boat of his own
design that he called Sheerwarter, a boat that possessed the sea keeping
abilities that would define every Whiticar boat to come.
Sheerwater had a Vee bottom rather than the more common rounded
hulls of the day with 12-feet of beam and loa of 33-feet. The framework
was of 5/4 white oak with black mangrove for the knees and stern, said
Whiticar. “Black mangrove is an upland species with curved branches
and each of the annual ring fibers spiral in the opposite direction,
forming something similar to our modern manufactured plywood. It’s
dense, hard and heavy,” he said. The trunk cabin and super structure
were made of white cedar planks. With a contemporary sleek design
and 165-HP Lycombing Marine Engine, she cruised as a blistering 18
knots, extremely fast for 1937. Sheerwater soon became part of the
charter fleet along with Bonbright’s boat Kingfisher, which his father
ran, Baby Orca and Gannet, which his younger brothers were now fishing
full time.
Because of the excellent sailfishing that Whiticar and charter captains
like Toley Engebretsen were enjoying, Stuart had become a popular
fishing destination with a burgeoning charter fleet by the mid 30s. The
Stuart Jaycees – a forerunner of the Stuart Chamber of Commerce –
was so successful promoting Stuart as the Sailfish Capitol of the World
with advertisements for its winter and summer fishing tournaments and
bronze, silver and gold lapel pins and certificates for anyone catching
various sized sailfish, scores of fish were landing at the dump. During
the winter months of 1941 some 40-plus area charter boats participated
in an unprecedented run of sailfish. Club records suggest more than
5,000 fish were landed during the 90 day period. On the peak day of
the run, 200 were killed, an excess that sickened captains like Whiticar,
who by this time had been releasing fish for some time. Although many
were released during the run, thousands were brought in for pictures
and either dumped in the river or carted off to the dump or the shark
plant. The slaughter sobered even proponents of fish on the dock. So
with the backing of newspaper editor Ernest Lyons, Whiticar convinced
the Jaycees to start a sailfish release promotion. The gist of it was to
offer a handsome 14K gold pin to anglers releasing their sailfish. As
explained by this quote from Ernest Lyons, “Release buttons are worn
by a League of Honor among sailfisherman, pledged to the sport – and
not to the wasteful killing of the species,” sailfish release was more
cache than killing off Stuart and Palm Beach. And in 1955 when the
Stuart Sailfish Club Light Tackle Tournament was created, thanks to the
Whiticars, it became the first major all release billfish tournament. Of
the 49 sailfish caught and released by 10 boats that year the top award
went to Capt. Jack Whiticar’s angler, Curt’s youngest brother.
The Cooperative Gamefish Tagging Program was started in 1954 by
Frank J. Mather III and Woods Hole Oceanographic Center in Mas -
sachusetts but years before this scientists at the University of Miami’s
Rosentiel School of Marine Science and pioneering organizations such as
the Sailfish Conservation Club of West Palm Beach and the Sailfish and
Tarpon Club of Mexico already had tagging programs in place with the
goal of finding out more about the life history and habits of sailfish. A
long time volunteer with the Miami laboratory’s research programs as well
as a big supporter of tagging, on January 28, 1951 Capt. Curt Whiticar
and his angler Ernest Lyons became the first ever to tag and release a
sailfish that was recaught, which happened 45 days later off Palm Beach.
By 1954, he’d had three recaptures.
(continued on page 20)
The Custom Shootout | 2

A renaissance man, Curt Whiticar could have chosen any one of a
number of careers. “From the time I was a kid I was always willing
to try new things, especially if it involved earning money. I guess you
could say I was ambitious,” he explained. He was born into a fishing
family and excelled at it - especially bottom fishing - but art
was an
early passion as well, one he started
earning money at as 12-year-old
painting custom signs for hotels and businesses and for captains wanting
names on the transoms of their boats. As a boy, he taught himself
to build rods, which he sold and was a finish carpenter as well as boat
builder. A graduate electrician, he was just as handy building custom
homes as boats, which he did for a handful others as well as himself
and his family. That said there was something magical about designing
and building good seaboats that Curt Whiticar could not get out of
system. Math and science were two of his best subjects growing up. In
designing and building boats, he was able to put all his skills to use.
The first ten boats he built between 1921 and 1954 were designed
as charter boats either for himself or his brothers Johnson
and Jack,
father Add and his brother John. With names like Gannet, Hobo,
Gulfstream, Skipper and of course Shearwater – Curt’s own favorite
– they became famous as record numbers of fish and world records
were caught and tournaments were won. Although Curt himself was
not much of a traveler Johnson and Jack became known on the South
Florida tournament circuit in the 50s and 60s and in ports throughout
the Bahamas. Capt. Add was still chartering at 85 years of age until
a broken hip sidelined him in 1972. After that he and his menagerie
of animals including the famous Whiticar manx cats with their short
tails would hold court each afternoon on the Whiticar docks, waiting
for Johnson and Jack to come in with their parties. He died in 1980;
Johnson had predeceased him. Jack Whiticar died around 1995 after
a long and distinguished career as a charter captain of the famous red
boat Hobo that in 1979 helped pioneer sailfishing off Cancun and Isla
Mujeres, Mexico.
In 1946 Curt’s uncle John gave a parcel of land on Willoughby Creek
to his father who suggested he build a boat shed on it. By this time
Curt was spending most of the summer off season building boats. He
already had installed a railway on his father’s adjacent property for
hauling boats so they could be worked on. With
the war over, surplus
materials from military institutions such as Camp Murphy in nearby
Hobe Sound were readily available for little or no money so with the
help of a couple of workers including brother Johnson, Curt set about
dismantling the 70 by 90 foot gambrel-roofed mess hall along with the
officer’s latrines, all of which he was able to buy for about $500.
By late 1947 Whiticar Boat Works more or less was up and running
with Curt dividing his time between his two charter boats – Gulfstream
and Norwester - building houses and keeping Whiticar’s seven
boats afloat. Two years later a direct hit from a hurricane demolished
the boat house. Scavaging what wood he could, he set about rebuilding
it again between jobs and as finances allowed. By 1952 the yard
was up and running and Curt
found himself with two boats to build, a
38-footer for his brother Jack and a 28-foot twin engine skiff for a local
man that was his first outside commission. Both designs were based
on the sea-kindly hull and lines of the Shearwater but with extra rocker
at the stem to make it an even better running boat in a following
sea.
Curt however soon realized that trying to build two boats at once while
running a full time charter business was more than he could handle.
It forced him to take stock of what he really wanted to do in life. “I
saw I could not do both well at the same time so I eventually sold my
charter boats to make Whiticar Boat Works my full time business,”
he said. Good thing too because after its launch in 1954, Jack started
campaigning the Hobo at Cat Cay and Chub Cay where people took
notice of the flashy red boat that cruised
at better than 20 knots. Well
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The Custom Shoutout
known big fisherman Herman Grey saw it and wanted one just like it;
Sea Spray was launched in 1955. The following year Curt stretched
the hull to 40-feet for the Widgeon and soon after had orders for two
more 40s and a 42. Between building and repairing boats, Curt and
his brother in law John Dragseth, who joined the business to help run
the repair side of things, were busy and stayed that way throughout
their careers with customers such as Richard Garlington Sr., (the boat
builder’s father), Jock Whitney, Capt. Nelson and Gloria Appelgate,
Marshall Field, Charles “Poor Boy” Robinson, Eleanor Bartlett and
others all seeking what they considered to be the finest custom seaboat
of the day – a 46- to 55-foot Whiticar.
Whiticar also credits Irving Bonbright’s passion for buying boats with
his father up and down the East Coast for helping him learn about
what made for good boats and bad boats. “My dad was a great teacher
as were some of those boats that didn’t turn out so great. It taught me
about the importance of getting the center the gravity right and keeping
the boats light.”
In 1986 Curt retired from boat building full time, turning the business
over to his son John, who has followed in his footsteps as boat builder
and to his nephew Jim Dragseth, John’s son, who manages Whiticar’s repair
facilities in Stuart and at the company’s satellite facilities on the East
Coast of Florida. Outside of a project Curt managed between golf dates
in 1999 building a 16-foot copy of the boat he first built in 1921, he’s
filled his days with his first passion. In the 37 years since he retired at 75
Curt Whiticar has completed more than 1,000 canvases not to mention
at least that many golf matches, a number that grows weekly.